Co-founders of Codemasters Commended in the Queen’s Birthday Honours

by John Kershaw on June 14, 2008 at 8:41 am

Codies came from a bedroom to take on the world

The two founding brothers of Codemasters, the UK based games developer, have been named as Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for their “services to the computer games industry”.

David and Richard Darling founded the company in 1985 and grew it out of their bedroom to become one of the largest game developers in the world.

Initially only developing for the ZX Sepctrum, they soon branched out to a whole host of other home computers, including the C64, Acorn Electron, Atari 8-bit and the BBC Micro (whose designer, Steve Furber, was granted a CBE at the start of the year for his service to computer science).

The pair continued to run Codemasters up until 2007 when, after 21 years, they left to pursue other projects. Rod Cousens, the current head of Codemasters, told the BBC:

For over 20 years David and Richard led Codemasters as it became one of the video game industry’s great British success stories. Their drive and passion for creating the best in interactive entertainment will always be part of the industry’s heritage and this recognition is well deserved.

With Codemasters being crowned the world’s leading independently owned video games developer by Develop Magazine in 2005, their latest game GRiD doing incredibly well around the world and their most recent teaming up with Majesco to begin releasing titles for the DS and Wii, things look to only be improving for the company founded in a bedroom, 22 years ago.

Source: BBC Technology

(Thanks Sephi)

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